‘Bones’ Season 8, Episode 19: Experiment This

That tonight’s Bonesintern of the week is Daisy Wick (Carla Gallo) can be forgiven because her screen time is mercifully short and the episode did not end with her and ex-boyfriend Sweets (John Francis Daley) getting back together.

The story instead revolves in around two things: 1) Sweets plans to finally move out of the Booth-Brennan household and into his own apartment and 2) Jack Hodgins’ (T.J. Thyne) child-like glee when it comes to conducting experiments.

After a few serious episodes, this one returns to the sometimes campy antics – without going over the top – that can sometimes happen in the Jeffersonian Lab we know and love. Indeed, it’s nice to let the spotlight shine on T.J. Thyne’s character for a while, as Thyne is capable of rattling off some of the most complex streams of dialogue in the series.

He also brings an infectious excitement to the small screen every time he’s allowed to do an experiment. This time out he gets to shoot a flame gun, fire a cannon, and test a booby trap that splatters Booth (David Boreanaz) with a ball of gelatin. His line about doomsday people versus his own party of conspiracy theorists is nothing short of hysterical.

Meanwhile, the baby duck is finally leaving the nest and while it may have been Booth who invited him to move in with them to begin with, it is Brennan (Emily Deschanel) who is reluctant to let him go. Free childcare and cool DVDs aside, Sweets truly has become an honorary member of Booth and Brennan’s immediate family over the past season.

Daisy points out that they were a safe haven for Sweets at a very difficult point in time and she’s correct. And while it could very easily have become stale or worn out, the writers have done a good job with the pacing of this particular character arc. That his new, very hot apartment neighbors mistake Booth for his dad is just icing on the cake.

As for the case, it isn’t as emotionally gripping or forensically intriguing as some of their more recent cases, but it isn’t horrible either. The victim is former Marine, Deanna Barieri (Mandi Kowalski), who was discharged for a fight with a fellow officer, but who was also slowly being consumed by her own paranoias. Specifically, her fears about the world devolving into chaos sooner rather than later, led her to a group of Doomsday preppers whose goal was to create a society that could survive the end of the world.

There are a string of suspects ranging from the fellow Marine Deanna punched out to the myriad of “whack-jobs” residing in the Doomsday bunker. Chief among these are Dr. Fred Dumaski (J.D. Walsh), the group’s leader Deanna’s lover, and Milo Mills (Wilmer Calderon), the group’s engineer who possessed the necessary information to construct the booby trap that led to her demise.

In the end, it’s the vengeful wife of the man Deanna was messing around with who killed her and it’s Brennan who gets in the final cool experiment. After the gunk under her fingernails is ignited by a spark from Brennan’s lighter, Delores Dumaski (Rona Benson) cops to being the one who set the trap and took out Deanna. Apparently angry people who sleep around don’t make the cut for the post-apocalyptic world in Delores’ mind. Good luck to her cellmates.